Let's Go Surfing

Though the sharing economy appropriates a language of progressive change and collectivity (e.g., “collaborative consumption”) to proselytize for their apps and business models, their effect is to more thoroughly atomize individuals, demanding that they regard themselves as a kind of small enterprise while reducing their social usefulness to the spare capacity they can mobilize for the platforms to broker. Users are asked to scour their lives for marketable time and resources, performing labor that the sharing-economy companies organize and expropriate.

I'd love to start to see, more, smaller movies. It's gotten fairly weird that most of the action blockbusters now have some random China or Hong Kong scene added to the story. I get that they want the movie to play to the broadest possible international audience. But it's just gotten a little forced feeling.

Like capitalism, consumerism has proven adept at assimilating critiques and adapting to them. In so doing, it cuts away the ground underneath the complainers who don’t appreciate its dynamism. When complaints arose that mass markets forced a stultifying conformity on consumers, the market responded with brand campaigns organized around an ethos of individualism, offering superficial options for customization to appease the desire for distinction.

When critics argued that acquiring goods didn’t necessarily lead to lasting happiness and that accumulation of stuff merely puts us on a hedonic treadmill, marketers like Paco Underhill began to emphasize shopping “experiences,” a bit of rhetorical prestidigitation whereby consumer items became souvenirs of promised states of feeling rather than their source. When the problem was with homogenizing brands and the eradication of mom-and-pop stores, corporations rolled out ersatz small brands and adopted old-timey packaging design to recall the heyday of regional businesses.

When social theorists complained about the hollowness of leisure time predominantly spent consuming and collecting goods, consumption began to be represented in marketing discourse as a creative form of meaning production, with consumers as “co-creators,” using products inventively in off-label ways to enrich their unique identity. When ecological concerns began to be voiced more loudly, the market responded with recyclable packaging and “green” products that offer a moral alibi for our consumer behavior and let us continue our love affair with packaging.

Let's Go Surfing

It is a fact of marketing that brands can’t ask for business too directly. People tend to recoil from requests that feel too direct, and this is why social-media accounts explicitly selling anything seem like spam, triggering disinterest. Brands have to make us want them by giving us something: in branding terms, providing #value. This is how humor, or the gift of laughs, becomes the universal gift that any Twitter account can provide to its followers, as #weirdtwitter proved in its universe of thousands of anonymous accounts tweeting nonsensical humor at each other.

[snip]

For us, there is a sociopathic freedom in knowing there is no individual behind the Twitter account. The corporation will not reach out for support in hard times the way an individual person on Twitter may. Laughing with it doesn’t trigger an existential fear that we might be relied on for support, sending vibes or crowdfunds during @dennysdiner’s darkest emotional hour.

That 2nd paragraph above really nails something. And it's the sort of thing that may eventually kill off alot of Facebook and Twitter, or at the very least, make being in spectator only mode the most important unstated rule. People aren't designed to "groom" hundreds of people. There's actually only a handful at a time people can actually handle interacting with on a give an take basis.

Corporations on the other hand exist as "one" to serve many. And their exchange/transaction terms are generally much more defined than those between real persons.

At the above link The Verge has a nice review of Adobe's new Pen and Ruler hardware.

It looks interesting.

From what I've seen and used, the iPad is a perfectly fine device for casual sketching, and in that context, I think the above tools will be quite fun for hobbyists. This sortof thing really needs to be integrated on the OS level though (Ink and Slide only work within selected apps) and you'd probably need a 14" or greater sized screen for it to be of real use to professionals. "Ink and Slide" do look neat though and at $199, they aren't ridiculously overpriced, but unless they get the cost down to $100, I'm not sure a lot of hobbyists will be that interested in going for it.

Groot!

As I mentioned earlier I picked up the movie Star-Lord and Gamora recently. I already had Comic versions of Rocket and Drax, so I didn't see the need to rebuy those figures.

That put me in a quandary though, Groot, the 5th member of the team is a build-a-figure (one piece comes with each figure in the wave). And I only wanted to by two of the sixth figures, although, I'll likely pick up Nova at some point, but that's still only 3 pieces and only half the pieces to make Groot.

So I decided to sculpt my own Groot in Sculptris and then print him on my Solidoodle 3D printer.

I printed him in two pieces (Really 4 really you count the arms separate) and glued him together. He had a couple little places I had to fix with some Sculpty putty. I spray painted him brown and did a little bit of model paint on him.

While he's not quite a store bought figure, I think he came out well enough to display on the shelf with the rest of the team.
Below are some more photos.

Printing of Thrones

Someone uploaded a model of the Iron Throne, from Game of Thrones to Thingiverse and I printed it out yesterday. It took over 9 hours to print. I've never ran the 3D printer that long before, and I was surprised it worked.

Oddly there is a line through the top of the throne (that wasn't on the model itself), but given the subtly of the detail, it didn't come out too bad.

I would have sat Jon Snow or Daenerys Targaryen in the throne, but Jon's rubber cape and Danenerys skirt do not allow them to sit. So it looks like Tyrion gets to rule all of Westeros!

And for fun, here's the Eleventh Doctor on the throne flanked by Weeping Angels I printed last year.

Let's Go Surfing

Interesting choice of words. Is it hurting the industry? probably not, there are more companies offering more products everyday and the top companies are getting bigger and putting out better machines each year.

By the tone of the article the author probably meant is the rapid progress hurting mainstream adoption? I don't think that's the case either. You can go down to Harbor Freight and buy a drill press for $50. It's been this way for a decade or more. Stable. A drill press is a very useful tool, but it's not a tool the average person really has a lot of use for. That's sort of the case with 3D printers. The average person just doesn't have much of a use for one yet.

The three things that will continue to slow adoption:

1. A lack of really cheap 99 cent or free quality models.

2. Creation software that still makes it very difficult for the evening or weekend hobbiest to make or tweak quality models to print.

3. Output speed. These printers are very slow with output times measured in hours. Again that's hard for the evening hobbiest who wants to tinker at 8pm. It's not like you can put together a model in an hour and then print anything in another hour before it's time to think about bed.

But do you need mass adoption for the space to be a success? Maybe not. Maybe 3D printers eventually reach the Harbor Freight $50 Drillpress level of adoption. That would be ok too I think.

Guardians of the Galaxy

This week I got the Movie Star Lord and Movie Gamora Marvel Legends Action Figures. These were ordered through Amazon, they have yet to show up in stores around here.

The Build-A-Figure for this wave is Groot. To complete Groot, I'd have to buy Movie Drax, Movie Rocket, Nova and Space Iron Man. At the moment I do not intend to buy all 4 of those additional figures (although I'll likely pick up Nova.). I'm ok with the Comic Drax and Comic Rocket I already have.

Besides, a tall plant character is a tall plant character right? I could have Swamp Thing fill in for Groot like at right? ;)

Actually, unless I find a good deal on an assembled Groot, or there is an alternate toy that comes out that works with the others scale, I may try my hand at sculpting him either digitally and 3D Printing, or with sculpty. We'll see.

Drax and Rocket Raccoon are comic based versions of the characters that were in earlier Marvel Legends waves.

I'm pretty happy with the whole foursome, although the verdict is still out on Movie Gamora or the more Flamboyant 70s Marvel comic cosmic styled Gamora. I'll wait and see the movie first on making that call.

Star Lord and Gamora are both very nice figures though. Star Lord especially comes with a bunch of accessories and a helmetless headswap, but I imagine I'll keep the masked one up for display.

Normally I like to see a movie first before getting the figures, but based on the one trailer I've watched, the movie looks like it will be a blast and these seem like pretty safe additions to the collection.

the Daily Donut

I learned thru social media today that it was National Donut Day, so I decided since it was a beautiful Friday that I would finally drive out to Clarkesville to see Chris Scheil's The Daily Donut Shop. I had a very nice visit with him in between his taking care of customers. I also had a very nice donut (and brought back a dozen for the weekend). Chris and I used to work together years ago and it was nice catching up. If you find yourself out on i96, make sure you get off on Exit 59 and take a short jog into town, and grab a donut and sit for a bit. He's got a nice little shop there and if it's not too busy, I promise you'll enjoy the conversation too.

Sat, 25 May 2013 07:57:39 -0700
I?m not a fan of the new Flickr redesign. It?s not even that I don?t like the visual look of it.My primary beef is: without warning they completely changed the service for paying customers. I?ve payed for a Pro account for years under the assumption that paying for a service would provide a little more reliability. Flickr has shown that not to be the case, so I?m planning to use it far less frequently and probably far differently than the personal photo site of record I have been using it as. (I?m also not pleased with their likely upcoming attention/advertising model)

I was able to put all my photos into one Set and download the full size images using a free service called flickandshare.com, so I have everything safely out of the service now. Likely I will eventually set up my own simple photo gallery (and give these photos a new home) on my website at chris-karath.com. Hosting your own services and codes seem to be the most reliable method for content that you want around for years to come.

Photos that are here now, will probably continue to be here, Yahoo willing, into the future.

Since Flickr has shown itself to be of unpredictable stability, and it appears to be transforming into more a social network than a photo service, I?ll probably plan on treating it as such. If you subscribe to my account for the action figures, I?ll probably from time to time still post a picture or two of those here with links back to my own site where I?ll likely start posting more photos.

If you follow for my personal photos, following me on Twitter or my personal blog atchris-karath.com will probably be your best bet. --- Best wishes, Chris.

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:49:02 -0700
I've never actually taken the full tour of the Museum. It was free today, so we went through it. It's nicely done for it's sort of thing.

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:49:02 -0700
Those light poles to the shore should be dry land

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:49:01 -0700
Stairways to nowhere. Grand Rapids.

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:49:00 -0700

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:48:59 -0700

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:48:58 -0700
Grand Rapids Art Museum. This display is by a new guy who just joined our team at work.

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 06:49:01 -0700

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 12:17:53 -0700
Both these guys have contributed a lot to comics. I'm not implying anything with the choice of pose. I figure in classic comic parlance though, these two comic heroes would be obligated to fight before teaming up to defeat some great evil.

Recent Blog Comments

Thread: p1825 Post by Jolloway2013-02-23 12:23:49 Hi Cris and other people who view this sight,
I just started a blog site jolloway.co.uk and I wonderd if anyone can give me any tips on blogging. I am curently using a site called word press to host me blog. I start around about a month ago and I\'m really struggling with it and if you do reply I\'m only 11 and found this sight by a photo in google Images.
-Josh
P.S. I love the background XP

Thread: p1706 Post by Chris2012-10-27 13:29:47 Fortunately, I resisted the DC/Master Bundles as they were pretty much only bundled with basic figures I already had. Had they been bundled with more unique DC figures, I might have alot more Masters figures at this point ;)

Thread: p1706 Post by De2012-10-27 13:06:27 I almost bit on Masters of the Universe when they were being bundled with DC Universe figures in the two-packs. I\'ve also liked the blending of sci-fi and fantasy but a lad only has so much room :-)

Thread: p1674 Post by T. Bass2012-10-24 20:55:50 Hi Chris:
Like you, I bought and just received an ONDA V701. Mine took 32 days (!) to arrive from China (bought from gadgetdealer.com... avoid like plague), and the box was beat to hell, but it seems to work fine ....with one exception.
That said, I like the tablet thus far, but a couple of things aren\'t flying right. One, it was advertised as having Adobe Flash ver. 11.1, but instead, mine came with 10.2. Yours? Not sure this matters, as Flash is going the way of the dodo-bird as far as Android goes.
My only real complaint thus far, and that despite trying everything I could find online, I cannot get NetFlix to work. This was/is one of the main reasons I bought it, as they advertised that it \"works with NetFlix\". I don\'t know whether it\'s the tablet, or the app that is the problem, but nonetheless, no love from NetFlix at this point.
I don\'t know if you are subscribed to Netflix, but if you are, I sure would like to know if it works for you on your V701, and if so, how did you get it going, and what settings are you\'re using to make it work? Appreciate hearing from you.
Best,
T. Bass
Applegate, Oregon

Thread: p1557 Post by davy2012-08-24 17:58:58 i kind of agree with you, and i\'m sure bale had the best intentions but the whole media circus at times is disturbing.
but if to had to pick on whether bale should have visited or not i\'d rather he visit for the sole reason that if he made any of the survivors feel good,even if it was only for the briefest moments, then it was worth it.
the victims medical and emotonals needs should be put first and if bale\'s visit helped any of them emotionally then i\'m glad